


It's A Love Story, Baby Just Say Yes

by lordsanga



Category: Cricket RPF
Genre: M/M, Rampant Silliness, WHY AM I TRYING TO WRITE COMEDY, also australian accents: amirite?, belligerent penis humour, i don't know what I am doing, just slapstick, people trip and it's funny
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 15:23:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14834840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordsanga/pseuds/lordsanga
Summary: There was a distinct possibility that the whole thing was a dream, but he’s read about lucid dreams before, and try as he might, he can’t bring himself to manifest a naked Tom Hardy on the bed with him.It's HeadbuttGate 2017 meets the ultimate fandom bodyswap trope, so, you know, take from that what you will.





	It's A Love Story, Baby Just Say Yes

**Author's Note:**

> To the lovely person who prompted this, I hope you enjoy! It was such a creative and whacky prompt, and I had so much fun with it, so thank you for it. Apologies that this is just part 1 -- life got the better of me. But part 2 is fully planned, and has much more confusion and bewilderment and love life dramas for these two lads ahead, ending just how you wanted -- so stay tuned. Love love xx.
> 
> BIGGGGGGG shoutout to [allrounderinsane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/allrounderinsane/pseuds/allrounderinsane) for the lifesaving last minute beta; girl, I am very grateful for the critical eye, the care, and the input you gave me; you're a star. Also to allrounderinsane & Drunk Aunt for organising the most kickass exchange. <3

It’s cold when Jonny stirs out of his sleep, colder than he usually likes it in the room at night, the stale freeze in the air barely kept off by the thin sheet covering him. He shifts to his side, curling himself up to conserve heat, and tugs at the sheet over him. It has a bit of resistance, which is surprising, like it was tucked to the side of the bed, but Jonny gives it a hearty tug. The bed is harder than he remembers it being the night previous, and the sheets thinner, or perhaps that was just what it felt like, waking up sore and with the vague threat of a headache in the small hours of dawn.

Jonny gives it another minute, two, not wanting to leave the comfort of the bed, before he throws the sheet off of him with a quiet curse. He swings his legs out of the bed, and presses them to the soft carpet on the floor, rubbing his eyes and adjusting them to the dim light of the room. He turns to the side table, where he kept the air conditioning remote, reaching a hand over to grab it.

There are three immediate problems.

The first is that there was no carpet on the floor.

The second is that there is no remote on the bedside table. Instead, Jonny finds his hand landing on fabric, pliant, and turns to it, working out even in the darkness that what he had grabbed onto was a soft, new baggy green.

The third is that he becomes slowly, sickeningly aware that there is someone else in the room with him, the hairs on the back of his neck beginning to stand up. Jonny feels every muscle in his body tense, in dread and anticipation, heart thudding in his chest, as the person shifts and sits up behind him, their weight sinking down the other end of the bed. He’s trying to work up the courage to turn around, scanning this foreign room for anything he could use in his defence, when the intruder says, in an irritable voice, with a thick Australian accent,

“It’s too fucking early for this, Cam.”

 

Cameron’s bladder kicks him awake just as the morning sun is beginning to peek in through the blinds, and he groans at the light on his face when he blinks open his eyes, grabbing for his phone. A peek tells him it’s still a quarter of an hour to his alarm, and he silently curses how much he drank last night, hopping off the bed to run into the ensuite. He must be drunk still, or perhaps hungover, because it feels like the bathroom had rearranged itself, he nearly mistakes the sink for the toilet, barely catching himself in time before positioning over the bowl in relief. The lighting in the bathroom is funny at this time of day; the rays reflect off his tummy, and the hair trailing down looks almost ginger in it, red-tinged in the sun. He turns around when he’s done, making for the door, but he stops short when he catches something strange in the mirror out of the corner of his eye.

He turns around, a quiet, deliberate movement as he fronts up to the mirror. His headache amplifies when he takes a look at it, and he really must be  _ very _ drunk still. He rubs his eyes, and then palms his entire face, trying to will the world to still, and for the fog over his brain to clear. His head slows the spinning just a fraction, and Cameron tries to remember his meditation course, focusing on his breath, counting up to then before he removes his hands very slowly off his face.

It doesn’t help. Staring back at him from the mirror, looking sickly pale and horrified, is the face of England’s freckled, ginger wicketkeeper, Jonny Bairstow.

There are a few good reactions when you’ve found yourself kidnapped. You could grab the closest object to you – ideally a lamp, or a cricket bat if you’ve got one handy – and turn it to a weapon, knocking the kidnapper out cold before figuring out an escape route. You could stay calm, and excuse yourself from the situation, distracting them as you quickly find a door and begin to make your way away. You could catch them unawares if you moved quickly and quietly, like a white and small Mohammed Ali, butterflying your way to them before knocking their jaw in a fiery punch, getting them too winded and surprised to chase you as you jump out of the nearest window.

Jonny doesn’t go for any of those options.

He chooses, instead, to go for exclaiming in a high pitched Australian – Australian? – accent, “Who the fuck are you and why the fuck are you in me room?” while scrambling out of the bed so fast he stumbles on the floor. It makes him lose both stealth and dignity, and he’s lifting himself up with a hand flung over the bed, hair rumpled, reaching over his free hand to grab anything he could to use as a weapon. Unfortunately, all it lands on is the baggy green, and he’s left waving it looking a bit deranged.

“Cam? You still fucking drunk, mate?”

“Why do you keep calling me that?” Jonny says, and for some reason, he can’t get his voice to sound any less Australian. The words drag out of him, and his tongue moves about his mouth like there are marbles in it, and Jonny can’t get the enunciation any clearer. “Where am I? What the fuck is happening?”

The man moves over, and Jonny raises the baggy green in self-defence again. The man ignores him, and reaches for the bedside lamp. He tugs at it, and the light floods over his face. Jonny blinks, trying to focus his gaze on the man in front of him. He tries a few times, blinking repeatedly, and shaking his head, but no amount of adjustment can make the man look any less like what he sees in front of him.

He’s talking to a very naked, very confused looking Mitch Marsh.

“Is this some sort of sick joke?”

 

Cameron’s first instinct is that he could sleep the problem off.

It isn’t wholly logical, he can admit on retrospect. There was a distinct possibility that the whole thing was a dream, but he’s read about lucid dreams before, and try as he might, he can’t bring himself to manifest a naked Tom Hardy on the bed with him. He also tried pinching himself, eliciting a sharp deep throated gasp of pain and a bright red mark on his newly freckled skin, so the prospect of this new nightmarish world where he had ginger pubes being reality was beginning to seem more and more inescapable by the second. He lies in bed, still focusing on his breathing, losing the ability to fall asleep with every second that he wills himself more aggressively to, trying to quell the raising panic in his belly. 

It takes what feels like a good hour to restore his heartbeat to normal, to get himself close to any sort of calm. Just when he’s begin to breathe a little more evenly, a loud vibration disturbs him, and makes him sit up with a jerk again. He reaches a hand for the phone – wincing when he sees his own hand, all the tan from the Aussie summer vanished, pale as a ghost – and grabs it, eyes widening at the number on the screen. There’s no name attached to it, but there doesn’t need to be: Cameron is very familiar with the number.

“Hello,” he says, picking up the phone, and hopes to god it isn’t himself on the other end.

Hearing your own voice recorded is always awkward. It always sounds tinny, and higher pitched than you image it to be, and scratchier and more annoying, and it makes you wonder why other people put up with your company if you’re constantly harping at them like some sort of seagull afflicted with a sore throat.  

Hearing your voice say things you’re not saying however, to you, and most of it consisting of panicked swearing, transcends awkward, and goes more into the region of bewildering, surreal and somewhat terrifying.

“Alright, alright, mate just – stop, stop, stop,” he says, trying to cut short the torrent of abuse directed in his direction, a bit injured that his own voice could chose to turn on him so powerfully. “Can we stop the swearing? Lad — calm down — listen—”

“Give me back my fucking phone,” Jonny’s voice says back to him, and it’s odd to hear himself swear, when he usually disciplines himself not to, “You have my fucking phone – I don’t know who you are or what you’ve done to me but I swear to god— give me back my phone.”

“Mate,” and Jonny actually finds himself laughing, though there’s no humor in it. “If you are who I think you are, then I think I have a lot more than just your phone.”

  
  


It takes a while for Cameron to stop threatening the equally agitated man who’d stolen his voice and his phone on the other end, and believe he was who he said he was. “You’re Jonny Bairstow,” he says, finally, faintly, forcing himself to look in the mirror as he spoke. It was logical, he supposes, in an utterly absurd way, because if was, right now, occupying Jonny Bairstow’s room and body and voice, he supposes there was nowhere else for Jonny Bairstow to be other than in his body, back in Churchlands in the house with Ashton, talking on his phone to him. 

“Mate, I don’t know what in hell is going on, but we have got to fix this,” he says, getting up now to pace around the strange bedroom, nearly tripping over Jonny’s kitbag on the floor. “You’ve got to clean up around here more—”  he mutters, almost to himself, when all of a sudden a thought occurs to him, and his stomach turns over in blind panic and fear. “Fuck,” he whispers “Fuck, Bairstow, we’ve got to fix this before the Ashes fucking start.”

Jonny replies after a beat, presumably it just kicking in for him too, and when he speaks, he sounds as terrified as Cameron. “Oh god,” he says, “You can’t play in my spot — sorry, no offense, lad.” 

“No off— _ hey _ !” Cameron says, and sounds indignant. “You talk when you aren’t fit to play Shield cricket, you useless ginger English cunt.” 

There’s a pause on the other end, and then Jonny says “Are you seriously  _ sledging _ me right now?”

“Sorry,” Cameron says, and feels briefly embarrassed. “Force of habit around an Englishman.” 

Jonny takes a deep breath, and Cameron didn’t know his own voice could sound so exasperated, when he speaks next. “Alright,” he says, and Cameron can tell he’s making an effort to sound as steady as he could. “Here’s the plan. We make it through the day pretending to be each other — all I have to do is nets today anyway, and you play in my position — we keep social interaction to the minimum. Then we meet tonight, at midnight, and figure out how the hell to switch back in our position.

Cameron takes a deep breath too, and forces himself to swallow down the constantly bubbling of dread. “Alright,” he says finally, nodding into the phone. “Alright. I just have some practice down with the WA lads anyway— Ashton will drive us down. Drive you down. Drive us down. God, I dunno. He’s my housemate,” Cameron adds, hearing himself ramble a bit, into the phone. “He’s great. He’s my best friend. He’ll help you out, he always helps me out.” 

“Great,” Jonny says, and he doesn’t comment on Cameron’s rambling, sounding distracted. “I’ll come to your — my — Jonny’s, me, my hotel room tonight.”

“Great,” says Cameron, even though it’s the opposite of how he feels. He takes in another inhale, trying to make it last a few seconds, and then nods, as decisively as he can, his voice oddly formal when he says to Jonny, “I’ll see you then.” 

  
  


After the conversation with Cameron, Jonny feels slightly calmer for having a plan, though not calm enough to drift back into the comfort of sleep. After a few hours of restless tossing and turning, Cameron’s phone starts blasting  _ Can’t Get You Out of My Head _ beside him, which Jonny takes as his alarm, making him sit up in a jittery start. “Kylie Minogue, really?” he mumbles to himself, reaching for the phone and jabbing at it in vain to make it shut up.

He forces himself to get up from the bed, feeling off-key throughout all of it, a foreign bathroom and foreign clothes, and everything about his body and his surroundings feeling different, smelling different, strange and unwelcoming. If it wasn’t all disorienting enough, it gets worse when he makes his way down to the kitchen, finding his way in this new house, and hears an awful sound coming from it, something like a small dog being slow stewed in a curry. 

“Is everything okay?” he says, with instinctive concern, still wincing at his voice, as he swings into the kitchen. Nothing looks on fire, though, and instead, he’s just greeted with Ashton Turner, tipping his head back, and singing loudly to the coffee he’s brewing in a pot. 

“And I  _ said _ ,” Ashton croons, turning around to look at him, not registering what Jonny asked, or appearing bothered, “Romeo,  _ take me _ , somewhere we can be alone—,” 

“Er—” Jonny says, because Ashton points a spoon at him, expectantly, and he doesn’t know what to do.

“I’ll be  _ waiting _ , all that’s left to do is run—”

Jonny blinks, and doesn’t know if he’s felt more awkward, which is quite a high standard for him. When he doesn’t join in, Ashton finishes the verse, but doesn’t carry on, looking expectantly at Jonny.

“No Taylor Swift this morning, Bangs?” he says, and shakes his head, going to the cupboard to get out two mugs. “You always join me for some Tay Tay in the mornings.” 

If Jonny was a different kind of person, he would have stored that information for future use in the Ashes, because surely it was a noteworthy point to bring up in on field discussions about the ability and masculinity of Australia’s new blood. Jonny isn’t that kind of person, though, so instead he just gives Ashton a wan smile, and shrugs his shoulders. 

“Sorry -- just think I’m tired lad,” he says, and adds, quickly, “Mate. Lad, mate.” 

Mercifully, Ashton ignores his linguistic struggles. He carries on about the kitchen, while Jonny hovers in it awkwardly, not sure what he was doing, or where any of the food was. He steps forward finally, and asks Ashton where the tea is, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, feeling the hesitancy like you were a guest in someone else’s house, only that someone had absolutely no idea you were a guest. 

“Tea?” Ashton says, looking quizzical at him, and then gestures at the mug on the counter. “I made you coffee.” 

“Oh right,” Jonny says. “Coffee. I love coffee.” He looks down at the mug Ashton hands to him, and his smile fades a little more. “I love black coffee. With no cream and sugar. And not tea.” 

“You love black coffee,” Ashton agrees, cheerfully, and then exclaims, “Oh! I made us breakfast too, I forgot.” 

Jonny’s tummy rumbles at that, in interest, and Jonny finds himself perking up. “Oh right?” He looks at the plate that Ashton hands to him with a broad grin, and picks up the sandwich, gratefully, taking a big bite. All of a sudden, it feels like his taste buds are brutally attacked, and he chokes, using all the effort he can muster to not just spitting the food back on the plate. 

“You okay?” Ashton says, looking concerned.

“Marmite,” Jonny coughs.

“Vegemite,” Ashton agrees. “Your favourite breakfast.” He looks briefly concerned, and says, “Did I not put enough on there?”

“You did,” Jonny says, and coughs again, forcing the corners of his lips upwards. “It’s perfect, thanks, Ashton,” he says as politely as he can manage, and lets his gaze drift to the clock that’s by the kitchen cabinets. “Only twelve more hours to go,” he says, quietly, to himself, and looks between his sandwich and coffee, and thinks that it could not come soon enough. 

  
  


“You can do this, Cameron,” Cam tells himself, taking deep breaths as he exits the hotel room down to breakfast. “You can do this,” he says, “It’s just twelve hours, you can do this, it’s just a little bit of social interaction, and a little bit of cricket, you can do that, right. You can do that.” 

The pep talk helps give him a slice of positivity, and he tries to open by going fully into it. He spots the team at breakfast, all of them in matching kit, which he thankfully had the common sense to realise the morning and wear, much as it made him feel nauseated. He slides in next to the first person he sees, which is Chris Woakes, and gives him a bright, beaming smile, wishing him good morning, cheerfully. 

The reaction he gets is the opposite of what he expects. Chris Woakes’s face crumples, instantly, and he shakes his head, looking quietly upset. “I told you to give me space, Jonny,” he says, and he gets up with his coffee to leave the table, leaving a very bewildered Cameron in his wake. 

“Well that didn’t go so well,” he says to himself, blinking. 

He eats the rest of his breakfast alone and surprisingly hurt by Chris Woakes, a man he had never met off a cricket pitch before in his life, not daring to attempt any further social interaction. The squad seem quiet, anyway, scattered and hungover, and they seem content to let Jonny eat alone, which Cameron can’t say sounds like a reassuring evaluation of Jonny’s social life in the squad. He spends the time running over the night again in his head, trying desperately to think of some sort of clue as to why or how this happened, though all he can remember was getting drink after drink served to him by the cute bartender, that were increasingly more colourful and fruity, till the night was so blurry he barely remembered bumping into the English players at the bar, Jonny Bairstow greeting him with that bizarrely affectionate headbutt. 

 

When he’s done, he goes back to his hotel room with some relief; Jonny had texted him  to say that there were just some light nets scheduled for the afternoon, and he wouldn’t have more to do before or after that. 

“It’s just cricket,” Cam tells himself in the mirror, “How hard can it be?” 

The problem that Cam hadn’t factored in, however, when he stood at the nets, poised with Jimmy Anderson coming in to bowl, is that he was essentially playing an Ashes series.  

There’s a ball from Stuart Broad that bounces sharply and nearly catches Cameron on the helmet, and for a minute, he loses himself.

“Oh, fuck you, you pommy cunt,” he calls out, blood rising quickly, “Why don’t you just walk on back to the crease, that’s right, you fucking cheat, your own mum can’t stand to see your face.” 

Cameron only catches himself when he feels everyone around him pause and stare at him.

“Er,” he says, and tries to shuffle his shoulders, gathering himself, ducking his head apologetically to the ground. “I mean, nice ball, pommy cu--Broad. Stuart. Er, nice ball, Stuart.” He says, and resumes his posture on the crease with as much dignity as he could muster.

  
  


The day doesn’t improve much past marmite for Jonny. 

At the WACA, he’s greeted with more Australian penises in the changing rooms, which is just more of an intimate familiarity with the Australian squad than he thinks even Trevor would recommend, and mostly focuses on keeping to himself, training his eyes on his own clothes as he changed. He feels something heavy in his pocket as he takes off Cameron’s jeans from the night before that he hadn’t changed out of; it’s Cameron’s car keys, which would be useful, and next to that a crumpled receipt from the bar last night. Jonny looks at it cursorily, just to widen his eyes at how many drinks Cameron had had that night, beating even Jonny, and his eyes briefly catch something written in bold below it. He doesn’t get a chance to read it, however, because there’s a man coughing in front of him, and Jonny looks up to see Mitchell Marsh.

“You alright there mate?” he says, and Jonny is caught without words momentarily. He gapes at him, because all he can really think of is waking up in bed with a six foot four giant naked Australian who he was convinced had kidnapped him, and who he had nearly cried like a little Australian girl in front of, in disorientation and fear. “Are you going to cry on me again?”

Jonny wants to respond with dignity, but instead he just says, “I’m well, thanks, lad,” and it sounds even more ridiculous in Cameron’s accent. Mitch raises an quizzical eyebrow. “Er, sorry I kicked you out, like,” he says, and cringes at how it doesn’t come out any less awkward. 

“What are you, Irish now?” he snorts, and Jonny wants to point out the difference, but bites his lip. Mitch looks like he’s opening his mouth to say something else to Jonny’s apology, but mercifully, AT interrupts the conversation, and tells Jonny JL’s waiting for them, and he wasn’t happy with how long they were taking. Ashton puts an arm around Cameron as he drags him, and throws a look back at Marsh, asking if he was giving Cameron any trouble. 

“Nah,” Jonny says quickly. “But just want to focus on training right now.”

Training with Western Australia isn’t as strange as Jonny had expected; for one, he’d played enough club and shield cricket down under to know what it was like, and for another, he was a Yorkshire player, so he wasn’t really phased by cults. Facing the W.A. quicks in the nets wasn’t really very pleasant, however, as Jonny quickly learned; they let up neither in speed nor sledging even among their own, and Jonny  spent most of the afternoon ducking desperately for his life, and being told he was going to fail his international career before it even started.

“You Aussies have a really funny way of doing things,” he mutters, half to himself, as he walks back with AT to the car.

“What was that?” Ashton says, 

“Nothing,” Jonny says quickly, “Nothing, I just said I’m really tired, I want to get home.” 

  
  


Later, when he’s made sure Ashton’s gone into his own room and asleep, Jonny sneaks out of the bed and gets into Cameron’s car, driving himself down to the team hotel. It feels oddly relieving to be back at a place with reassuring familiarity, only if they had only stayed at the hotel for less than a week; he sees some of his teammates walking about and feels such happiness at the sight that he nearly forgets himself and calls out to Joe and Jimmy, walking down the hallway. He catches himself in the nick of time, and hides behind a pillar before they turn his way instead. He waits for the coast to clear before he sneaks into the elevator, heart thudding in the hope that none of his teammates would be in it, and the anxiety doesn’t let up till he’s at his room again, knocking at the door, and trying not to startle out of wits to see an equally relieved himself answering it, letting him in with a curse of relief.

“What took you so long?” Jonny’s body asks him, and it’s hard to reconcile the fact that his own body was speaking to him, and Cameron Bancroft was inside it. “Fuck, I’ve had a rough day.”

“ _ You’ve _ had a rough day?” Jonny says, incredulously, and struggles not to mention the penises. “ _ I’ve _ \-- you know what, never mind. We’ve got to figure this out and fix this. As soon as it’s possible.”

Cameron -- it’s hard to remember it’s Cameron -- seems as distracted by him as he does by looking at himself outside of a mirror. Jonny snaps his fingers, snapping Cameron out of it, and Cameron blinks, apologetically.

“Sorry,” he says, and tilts his head to the side. “Fuck, is that really how short I am?”

“Not the time, Cameron!” Jonny says, agitated. “Do you have any leads as to how we got into this situation?” 

Cameron shakes himself out of it, and then paces about the room. “I was thinking about the other night,” he says, “I don’t remember much of it, do you?”

Jonny bites his lip, and tries to let the night flash back at him. It isn’t easy, because most of it seems blurry, remembering standing with Chris in the corner of the bar for ages, and then Chris leaving, and then having one too many drinks served to him by the bartender, each getting more comically colourful, many of them on the house, probably because of how mopey Jonny looked. Then he remembers seeing them, the Australians, going up to them--

“And then you headbutted me,” Cameron interjects, and gives him a quizzical frown. “Bit weird, mate. I thought you had tripped, but then you grinned at me like it was on purpose.” 

“It was on purpose.” Jonny pauses, frowning. “It wasn’t that weird,” he says, and his voice is defensive. “It’s how the rugby lads greet each other.”

Cameron looks skeptical. 

“Shut up,” Jonny says, though Cameron hasn’t said anything. “As I was saying -- wait,” he says, and narrows his eyes. “The bartender. The drinks.” He steps forward, and Cameron looks briefly alarmed, putting his hands out in front of him and asks him if he was going to headbutt him again. Jonny gives him a withering look at that, but ignores him, and looks at Cameron. “When I bumped into you, you had the same brightly coloured drink in your hand as I did.” 

“I remember the bartender was giving me drinks for free,” Cameron frowns. “Which never happens-- Funny looking lady, very goth, black lipstick and all-- felt like she was watching me odd the whole night.”

“Me too,” Jonny frowns deeply, and suddenly reaches for Cameron’s wallet, rifling through it, hoping he hadn’t thrown away the reciept. Cameron moves too, quickly, to get Jonny’s discarded jeans off the floor, and reaches into it, pulling out a piece of paper as well. 

“Fuck,” Jonny says, staring hard at the paper.

“Shit,” Cameron agrees. He extends his hand, putting his reciept next to Jonny’s, and they both stare at  them.

Both reciepts are blank, no number of drinks ordered, no signature, no price, no anything. Instead, there’s only bold writing on them, four lines, the same on each.

 

_ Tonight it seems something’s gone amiss _

_ You’ll have to fix it with a true love’s kiss.  _

_ But do it before the clock strikes midnight tomorrow, too _

_ Or in your new bodies your new life will debut _

 

“The last line doesn’t rhyme,” Jonny muses, reading it out loud. “Oh, no, wait, it does in Australian.” He looks up after the observation, but Cameron is just looking at the paper, face white and panicked, and it starts to set the fear into Jonny too. 

“I think if we don’t kiss our true loves by midnight tomorrow,” Cameron says, finally, looking up at him haunted. “We’ll be stuck in each other’s bodies forever.”

  
  
  
  



End file.
